[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.

Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights.

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.